L.A.W.L.S.

Up front, I’m just gonna say that Emerald City Comic Con was EXTREMELY busy and very, very fun! So much fun that I barely had time to remember to stop and take pictures to document my experience. So, unlike previous convention wrap-ups that I’ve done, this is gonna be lacking in visual aids. :/ Sorry. Part of the problem this time around was that I didn’t have my usual team of people who come along with me to these things. Usually, my friends remember to take the pictures more than I do because I typically get lost in the experience and just wanna live in the moment as it’s happening. Heh, wish I could do that on normal days instead of always worrying about my comic and all the things I need to get done (ie. blogs and such, haha).

I wasn’t even suppose to be exhibiting at this convention. Last year when the deadlines came up to turn in applications it completely slipped my mind that I was supposed to turn them in: too many cons and comics to work on, oops! Luckily for me (though unfortunately for her), Mindy of White Noise couldn’t make it to the con and my friends Cari (Toilet Genie) and Savannah (Amya) asked me if I wanted to take her place. So, OBVIOUSLY, I jumped on the chance to go – I’ll take any opportunity to go back to Seattle. Emerald City Comic Con is probably one of my all time favorite cons and Seattle is one of my favorite cities… so this convention is a MUST do for me! Anyway, it was a real shame that I didn’t get to meet Mindy. I enjoy the style of her comic and would have loved to sit and talk to her about it, but alas, that didn’t happen!

Even though I didn’t get to meet Mindy I did get to meet the rest of the Webcomic Bucket gang, which was pretty awesome! Pascalle Lepas of ZAP! (and her brother, I think?), sat just to the left of me and beside her were the dudes who do No Need for Bushido, all of who were really nice, stand up people! Pascalle had this really badass vinyl squid named Billy that I really enjoyed…if I knew how to properly do custom vinyls, I probably would have bought one and done that. Oh well.

The few times I was able to get away from my table, I did get to visit with some of the usuals:Daniel Davis, James/Rebecca Hicks, and Alex & Ray, which was great. I LOVE to visit them and talk shop. This time, however, I was able to meet a few new people who I’ve always wanted to talk to in person, rather than JUST on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. For instance, I finally met Jefbot. It’s strange that it took us doing a con together up in Seattle to finally meet, because he literally lives about twenty minutes away from me here in Los Angeles. I’m very happy to report that he was very awesome in person! It always makes me nervous to meet cartoonists in person. I don’t know why; I guess I just always have this feeling that people won’t give me the time of day in real life or will barely acknowledge me or something, which isn’t always the case! Though, yes, there are people out there who are complete assholes, full of themselves and their work…anyone I’m mentioning in this blog is NOT that way, especially Jeff! He was RAD! Speaking of which, I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that Danielle Corsetto was a total sweetheart! She was someone I was nervous about approaching for whatever reason, but I’m glad I finally sat and talked to her. She and Alina Pete both gave me quite a bit of insight into what I need to do to start preparing for my first book, which I’m hoping to start working on within the next few weeks!

As far as new artists and comics I’d like to point out to you guys go, I do actually have a few. First, I met the girl who does an fantastically artistic comic called “The Locked Maze“, which I’ve been eyeing for months now. Unfortunately, I have yet to sit down and fully read it, but I can say the art work is grade A quality and have a feeling the story is just as good! So, on that alone, I recommend it to you guys! Another comic I found at this con (which I’ll hopefully get a chance to sit down and read in the next few weeks) is called Spell Checkers. It caught my eye twice as I walked to the bathroom, so I decided to stop and talk to the artists and writers. Not only were they were really nice, but they gave me a free poster which they signed, so that was awesome, instant fan! XD Anyway, I’ll probably stop at a store soon and check it out BUT if you guys check either of these two out, let me know if you like it or not cos I’d love to hear your opinions!

Finally, I met this girl named Jessica Correa through Cari this last year at San Diego Comic Con who I mentioned in that recap blog as doing a piece called “Gothic Queen“. Well, this year she further surprised me by doing a piece called “The Violinist,” which I LITERALLY couldn’t stop staring at. I absolutely loved the hell out of it and I REALLY wanted to buy it.. but didn’t have a safe way to transport it back to California. Eventually I’ll buy it…but I really wanted to share it and her work with you guys again, because it’s absolutely amazing. Here’s “The Violinist”:

[Click the image to fav+ on DeviantART]

Completely off the topic of comics I finally met Roberto Hoyos the creator of Throwboy, a totally rad company that makes pillows of talk bubbles that say “lol” or of random Apple app icons, and my personal favorite the RSS Pillow! Hopefully one day I can buy one of those bad boys off of him, cos the are absolutely AWESOME! I’m glad to report that him and his friend Amanda were really awesome people and it seems that after talking to them were probably gonna be doing some of the same cons together in the next year, so you’ll probably hear me talk about them again. :]

Other than that, it was nice just to hang out with friends both new and old (including Anthony…or Andrew…or Anthadrew? Savannah’s man friend), to meet some very awesome people who came up to the table and even some readers who were super nice and interesting as well. Sadly, I was told by a few people that it was REALLY hard to find me because of my lack of banner (getting one made in the next few weeks…phew!) AND the fact that I really didn’t have too much time to work on my presentation…but everything worked out and I did well enough that I will, in fact, be returning to Seattle next year for the con! I’ve talked it over with a few artists and it’s safe enough to assume that the crew I will be with next year is Ryan Hudson of ChannelATE, Alex & Ray of Buttersafe and (crosses fingers that he doesn’t wuss out on me last minute) Scott Ferguson of Nerf This! I’m extremely excited about this, these guys are some of my favorite people to talk with in the industry and they all have very solid comics which I love to read! If you haven’t read their comics yet, you definitely should. Also! You guys should pester Scott and make sure that he doesn’t back down on us – dude needs some motivation! ^_~

Anyway, as promised, this was my link-sleuth of a blog about Emerald City Comic Con! I promise my wrap-up blog for Phoenix Comic Con will have more pictures and more stories about the awesomeness that ensued…but, thanks for putting up with all these words this time around.